The firewall didnt help matters. I think its FUBAR and I need to reformat anyways, so ill reformat and reinstall and put fresh SAMBA up, on Mandrake 9.0. The system has 2 NICs and NET_MASQ shares internet to the XP machine. Therein it acts as a DHCP server and has a firewall. I will open 139 from the start next time.